january 2012http://www.maximumpc.com/taxonomy/term/19508/
enCorsair Vengeance 1500 USB Gaming Headset Reviewhttp://www.maximumpc.com/corsair_vengeance_1500_usb_gaming_headset_review
<!--paging_filter--><h3>A pretty impressive second act, literally, figuratively, and audibly</h3>
<p>We awarded Corsair’s HS1 USB headset a 9 verdict last year, remarking that its huge 50mm drivers, solid and comfortable construction, and $100 price tag added up to a surprisingly good value for a freshman effort. The one element that denied the HS1 a Kick Ass award was its uninspired—nay, downright ugly—industrial design.</p>
<p>Corsair’s new flagship USB headset, the Vengeance 1500, retains all the strengths of the HS1 and eliminates nearly all its weaknesses. The Vengeance 1500 packs the same gigantic drivers as its predecessor, providing top-notch sound quality for this price range. The circumaural design and thick, squishy padding make for a tight seal around your ears that isolates you from the pollution of ambient noise.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/corsairvengeance1500headset-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/corsairvengeance1500headset-small.jpg" width="383" height="480" /></a><br /><strong>The Vengeance 1500 sounds every bit as good as Corsair's earlier HS1 USB headset, and it looks a whole lot better.</strong></p>
<p>While it doesn’t deliver the level of quality that some higher-end products provide—Sennheiser’s PC 333D G4ME, for example—the Vengeance 1500 does provide respectable dynamic range and bass response that’s perfectly suitable for both games and movies. And while nothing can compare to an actual surround-sound setup, Corsair does deliver Dolby Headphone. This software algorithm upmixes stereo and 5.1-channel sources to simulate a 7.1-channel speaker system wrapped around your head, delivering better positional awareness than stereo phones are capable of providing.</p>
<p>Build quality as compared to the HS1 has also improved significantly. The struts connecting the ear cups to the headband feature an attractive brushed-aluminum finish, and the cups themselves swivel to lay flat against your chest when the headset is resting on your neck. They might feel odd if you’re transitioning from an on-ear headset, but after many extended gaming sessions, we’ve found the Vengeance 1500 to be one of the most comfortable headsets we’ve tested. They are quite large, however, so they might not be the right choice if your head is particularly small.</p>
<p>Corsair’s HS1 is a solid headset; the only reason we wouldn’t recommend it today is that the Vengeance 1500 is even better. If you’re looking for a serious gaming headset and can afford to spend 100 bones, you won’t go wrong with this one.</p>
<p><strong>$100, <a href="http://www.corsair.com" target="_blank">www.corsair.com</a></strong></p>
http://www.maximumpc.com/corsair_vengeance_1500_usb_gaming_headset_review#comments2012corsairHardwareheadsetjanuary 2012usb headsetvengeance 1500HeadphonesReviewsFrom the MagazineFri, 30 Mar 2012 20:51:51 +0000Alex Castle22179 at http://www.maximumpc.comUltrabook Ultra-Roundup: 4 Top-Notch Notebooks Reviewed and Comparedhttp://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/ultrabook_ultra-roundup_4_top-notch_notebooks_reviewed_and_compared
<!--paging_filter--><h3>Will this new class of slim, trim, relatively affordable portables be the Next Big Thing?</h3>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img src="/files/u139222/ultrabooks-header.jpg" width="620" height="347" /></p>
<p>You’d have to actively be avoiding the tech media over the past several months not to have heard about Ultrabooks. Their coming has garnered a boatload of buzz, fueled in no small part by Intel’s $300 million fund to get hardware and software makers behind the cause.</p>
<p>Ultrabooks are Intel’s answer to the spread of ARM-based tablets—a way to capture the hearts and minds of the masses with an x86-based portable device (of the Intel persuasion, natch). To that end, Ultrabooks are required to meet a few key “desirability” standards. They must be slim, lightweight, have generous battery life, and boot and resume from hibernation in brisk fashion. It’s also understood they should look cool. As Apple products so clearly demonstrate, style sells. And sure enough, Ultrabooks—at least those that have debuted so far—are heartily infused with MacBook Air influence.</p>
<p>So are these new, “cool” devices the next must-have products? Is all the hoopla warranted? We review the first four Ultrabooks to kick off the category. All are 13.3 inch models, but each brings its own brand of hot-newness to the table, with varying degrees of persuasiveness, as you’ll see on the following pages.</p>
<h2>Acer Aspire S3</h2>
<h3>Priced right, but far from perfect</h3>
<p>When Ultrabooks were first announced it seemed doubtful that manufacturers could turn out these wannabe MacBook Airs at the sub-$1,000 price Intel was promising. Acer put those doubts to rest with the Aspire S3, which debuted at $900. Given its relative affordability, it’s not surprising that the Aspire S3 makes a few compromises in its Air aspirations.</p>
<p>Measuring .68 inches at its thickest, the ever-so-slightly wedged three-pound chassis is matte silver throughout, save for its black rubber hinge and gray keyboard. An attractive brushed-aluminum lid lends the S3 a solid feel and a classy countenance—at least when the notebook is closed. The inside and underneath are all plastic. Nevertheless, the S3 feels rigid when held by one corner, and we like that it opens almost 180 degrees.</p>
<p>Overall, the S3’s island keyboard is comfortable to type on, although the key press is a bit shallow and many of the oft-used keys around the periphery, such as Enter, Shift, Backspace, etc. are truncated. That’s particularly true of the arrow keys, which also double as volume and screen-brightness controls. Using the S3’s unified clickpad, which supports multitouch functions, didn’t give us any woes.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/aceraspires3-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/aceraspires3-small.jpg" width="500" height="387" /></a><br /><strong>Closed, the S3 cuts a more impressive figure, with its handsome brushed metal lid on display.</strong></p>
<p>Port selection is spare, a quality of all Ultrabooks, and here consists of a headphone/mic, a media reader, HDMI, and two USB 2.0 ports—the S3 is the only Ultrabook in this roundup not to feature USB 3.0.</p>
<p>Acer tapped the Core i5-2467M for processing duty. While the base clock is just 1.6GHz, it can Turbo up to 2.3GHz, and thus performed better in most benchmarks than the 2.13GHz Core i7-640LM Arrandale CPU in our zero-point ultraportable rig. The S3’s lagging score in Quake III is no doubt the result of its single-channel RAM, which is particularly problematic in older titles. Conversely, its score in Quake 4 demonstrates the advances of Sandy Bridge’s integrated graphics, although the gaming chops of any ultraportable out right now will be pretty limited.</p>
<p>In our video playback test, the S3’s battery lasted five hours; it recharged to full capacity in half that time. Videos themselves looked crisp and color-accurate on the S3’s 1366x768 glossy screen if the screen was tilted just so. Otherwise, color and detail were diminished to varying degrees.</p>
<p>The S3 is unique among these Ultrabooks for featuring a mechanical hard drive, but it’s paired with 20GB of NAND flash for SSD caching, using Intel’s Smart Response Technology (SRT). Thus, your most-often used programs benefit from the SSD’s faster performance. The S3’s boot time of approximately 39 seconds, however, was a good deal slower than that of the SSD competition.</p>
<p>Acer also offers a $1,300 S3 model with a Core i7 and a 240GB SSD. But truth be told, the body is better suited to the lower-cost category, where it must make due with the modest praise of being a decent budget option.</p>
<p><strong>$900, <a href="http://www.acer.com" target="_blank">www.acer.com</a></strong></p>
<div class="lowdown">
<div class="module orange-module article-module verdict-block"><span class="module-name-header" style="font-size: 14px; border-bottom: 1px solid #000;">Acer Aspire S3</span><br />
<div class="module-content" style="margin-top: -20px;">
<div class="module-text full">
<div class="product-verdict">
<div class="positive"><span class="header">RIPE APPLE<br /></span>
<p>Sub-$1K; attractive, sturdy lid; decent performance.</p>
</div>
<div class="negative"><span class="header">ROAD APPLE<br /></span>
<p>Plastic insides don't match aluminum outside; no USB 3.0; uses HDD; narrow vertical viewing angle.</p>
</div>
<div class="verdict"><img src="/sites/maximumpc.com/themes/maximumpc/i/mxpc_7.jpg" alt="score:7" title="score:7" width="210" height="80" /></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="module orange-module article-module"><span class="module-name">Specifications</span><br />
<div class="module-content">
<div class="module-text full">
<div class="spec-table orange">
<table style="width: 100%;" border="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>CPU</td>
<td>1.6GHz Intel Core i5-2467M</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>RAM</td>
<td>4GB DDR3/1333</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Chipset</td>
<td>Intel UM67</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Display</td>
<td>13.3-inch, LED-backlit, 1366x768</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Storage</td>
<td>Hitachi 320GB HDD, 20GB SSD</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Connectivity</td>
<td>2 USB 2.0, HDMI, headphone/mic, media reader, webcam</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Lap/Carry</td>
<td>3 lbs, 0.3 oz / 3 lbs, 11.5 oz</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="module orange-module article-module"><span class="module-name">BENCHMARKS</span><br />
<div class="module-content">
<div class="module-text full">
<div class="spec-table orange">
<table style="width: 100%; height: 170px;" border="0">
<thead>
<tr>
<th class="head-empty"></th>
<th class="head-light">Zero Point</th>
<th class="head-light">Acer Aspire S3</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Premiere Pro CS3 (sec)</td>
<td>1,260</td>
<td>1200 <span style="color: #339966;">(5.0%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Photoshop CS3 (sec)</td>
<td>183.6</td>
<td>162.5 <span style="color: #339966;">(13.0%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Proshow Producer (sec)</td>
<td>1,533</td>
<td>1,497 <span style="color: #339966;">(2.4%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>MainConcept (sec)</td>
<td>2,530</td>
<td>2,591 <span style="color: #ff0000;">(-2.4%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Quake III (fps)</td>
<td>191.7</td>
<td>168.8 <span style="color: #ff0000;">(-11.9%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Quake 4 (fps)</td>
<td>17</td>
<td>38.5 <span style="color: #339966;">(126.5%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Battery Life (min)</td>
<td>240</td>
<td>252 <span style="color: #339966;">(5.0%)</span></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p><em>Our zero-point ultraportable is an HP EliteBook 2540p with a 2.13GHz Intel Core i7-640LM, 4GB of DDR3/1333 RAM, integrated graphics, a 250GB, 5,400rpm hard drive, and Windows 7 Professional 64-bit</em></p>
<hr />
<h2 style="clear:both;">Toshiba Portégé Z835</h2>
<h3>Lightest load, lowest price, least compelling</h3>
<p>Toshiba does Acer $100 better, offering the Z835, a Best Buy exclusive, for $800. Its low price is matched by its light weight. At two pounds, 6.6 ounces, it beats all the others here by a good half-pound. But the Z835 also looks and feels the cheapest of the bunch. Its construction seems less solid—particularly the lid, which has a disconcerting amount of flex.</p>
<p>The Z835’s dark-gray and black color scheme is peppered with chrome accents that look a bit dated. All the keys on the Z835’s island keyboard are normal width, but they are also slightly squat, which takes getting used to, as does the shallow travel of all keyboards of this ilk. The keyboard’s backlighting is a surprising feature at this price—and not one currently found on the more expensive Ultrabook models. A traditional touchpad of decent size with discrete right and left buttons stands out among the other Ultrabooks’ clickpads.</p>
<p>The Z835’s hardware specs are another reflection of its low price. The centerpiece is a 1.4GHz Core i3-2367M, which doesn’t benefit from any Turbo boost whatsoever. This renders the Z835 the slowest in the benchmarks of all four Ultrabooks, and even slower than our elderly zero-point, except in Quake 4, thanks to Sandy Bridge graphics.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/toshibaportegez835-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/toshibaportegez835-small.jpg" width="500" height="387" /></a><br /><strong>Only the Portégé Z835 offers a backlit keyboard—a standard feature of the MacBook Air.</strong></p>
<p>The Z835 also skimps on storage capacity, offering just 128GB. It’s full-SSD, but that’s not saying much. The Toshiba NAND flash coupled with a Toshiba controller mustered just 187MB/s sequential reads in CrystalDiskMark—half the speed and then some of the other two SSDs in this roundup. More pathetic still, the Z835’s sequential write speed of 49.23 is 40 percent slower than that of the HDD in Acer’s S3.</p>
<p>On the brighter side, the Z835 offers the most generous array of ports, with full-size VGA in addition to full-size HDMI, two USB 2.0 ports plus one USB 3.0, and an Ethernet port—a rarity in this roundup.</p>
<p>The Z835’s glossy 1366x768 screen isn’t spectacular, but it reproduced pictures and videos without noticeable flaws and the viewing angle is thankfully wider than that of the Acer S3. In our battery rundown test, the Z835 played a continuously looping video for close to five hours. It took about three hours to completely recharge. It booted to Windows in 24 seconds, which isn’t bad.</p>
<p>Even more so than Acer’s S3, the Z835 deserves credit for offering such a svelte and exceedingly portable form factor for its price. But reaching that price entailed compromises—a few too many, in our opinion, to grant this product more than a mild endorsement.</p>
<p><strong>$800, <a href="http://www.toshiba.com" target="_blank">www.toshiba.com</a></strong></p>
<div class="lowdown">
<div class="module orange-module article-module verdict-block"><span class="module-name-header" style="font-size: 14px; border-bottom: 1px solid #000;">Toshiba Portégé Z835</span><br />
<div class="module-content" style="margin-top: -20px;">
<div class="module-text full">
<div class="product-verdict">
<div class="positive"><span class="header">SLIM SHADY<br /></span>
<p>Very slim and lightweight for the price; lots of ports.</p>
</div>
<div class="negative"><span class="header">SLIM PICKINGS<br /></span>
<p>Too underpowered; sorry SSD speeds; flimsy lid.</p>
</div>
<div class="verdict"><img src="/sites/maximumpc.com/themes/maximumpc/i/mxpc_6.jpg" alt="score:6" title="score:6" width="210" height="80" /></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="module orange-module article-module"><span class="module-name">Specifications</span><br />
<div class="module-content">
<div class="module-text full">
<div class="spec-table orange">
<table style="width: 100%; height: 171px;" border="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>CPU</td>
<td>1.4GHz Intel Core i3-2367M</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>RAM</td>
<td>4GB DDR3/1333</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Chipset</td>
<td>Intel HM65</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Display</td>
<td>13.3-inch, 1366x768</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Storage</td>
<td>Toshiba 128GB SSD</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Connectivity</td>
<td>1 USB 3.0, 2 USB 2.0, Ethernet, HDMI, VGA, headphone/mic, media reader, webcam, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Lap/Carry</td>
<td>2 lbs, 6.6 oz / 3 lbs, 1.2 oz</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="module orange-module article-module"><span class="module-name">BENCHMARKS</span><br />
<div class="module-content">
<div class="module-text full">
<div class="spec-table orange">
<table style="width: 100%; height: 170px;" border="0">
<thead>
<tr>
<th class="head-empty"></th>
<th class="head-light">Zero Point</th>
<th class="head-light">Toshiba Portégé Z835</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Premiere Pro CS3 (sec)</td>
<td>1,260</td>
<td>1,620 <span style="color: #ff0000;">(-22.2%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Photoshop CS3 (sec)</td>
<td>183.6</td>
<td>220.5 <span style="color: #ff0000;">(-16.7%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Proshow Producer (sec)</td>
<td>1,533</td>
<td>2,075 <span style="color: #ff0000;">(-26.1%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>MainConcept (sec)</td>
<td>2,530</td>
<td>3,660 <span style="color: #ff0000;">(-30.9%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Quake III (fps)</td>
<td>191.7</td>
<td>159.3 <span style="color: #ff0000;">(-16.9%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Quake 4 (fps)</td>
<td>17</td>
<td>38.4 <span style="color: #339966;">(125.9%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Battery Life (min)</td>
<td>240</td>
<td>297 <span style="color: #339966;">(23.8%)</span></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p><em>Our zero-point ultraportable is an HP EliteBook 2540p with a 2.13GHz Intel Core i7-640LM, 4GB of DDR3/1333 RAM, integrated graphics, a 250GB, 5,400rpm hard drive, and Windows 7 Professional 64-bit</em></p>
<hr />
<h2 style="clear:both;">Asus Zenbook UX31E</h2>
<h3>Now we're talking turkey</h3>
<p>With the Asus UX31E, all the fuss about Ultrabooks starts to make sense. Its all-metal chassis, cut from a single sheet of aluminum, is undeniably handsome. And while this attractive metal wedge that’s just .71 inches at its thickest brings to mind the fine craftsmanship of a MacBook Air, it’s by no means a knockoff. The UX31E possesses a unique character that’s admirable in its own right. And at $1,050, it’s $250 less than its similarly spec’d Apple counterpart.</p>
<p>Silver inside and out, save for a black bezel around the screen and black backing to the keyboard, the UX31E sports a faintly etched pattern of concentric circles on its lid, while the deck is adorned with a pattern of brushed vertical lines, interrupted only by a spacious clickpad. While clickpads can be persnickety and frustrating to use, we didn’t have any issues with the pad on the UX31E. As for the keyboard, the size and spacing of the keys feels right, and although the key press is shallow, there’s a satisfying click at the end of each depression.</p>
<p>Another welcome feature of the UX31E is its 1600x900 screen resolution, besting the 1366x768 of the other screens in this roundup and the 1440x900 of the 13.3-inch MacBook Air. Like all the others, the UX31E’s screen is glossy; it produces a bright, vivid picture and holds up well off axis.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/asuszenbookux31e-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/asuszenbookux31e-small.jpg" width="500" height="387" /></a><br /><strong>The two speakers embedded in the chassis are powered by Bang &amp; Olufsen ICEpower tech and put out surprisingly full audio for a device of these dimensions.</strong></p>
<p>Internally, the UX31E also impresses. Its Core i5-2557M proc is clocked at 1.7GHz, with a max Turbo frequency of 2.7GHz. Combine that with a SATA 6Gb/s SSD and you’ve got a machine that posts healthy gains over our zero-point in the benchmarks and some of the fastest scores in this roundup. To put it in perspective, the UX31E had sequential read and write speeds of 463MB/s and 341MB/s, respectively—pretty darn close to the spec’s max bandwidth. Sadly, the SSD is just 128GB.</p>
<p>The UX31E’s battery life surpassed five hours in our tests. It recharged to 50 percent in less than an hour, and reached a full charge in three. Booting to Windows took 23 seconds.</p>
<p>Asus throws in a tasteful, brown padded carrying case for the UX31E, as well as a matching pouch that holds two connector dongles: USB-to-Ethernet and Mini VGA-to-VGA. Yes, Mini VGA is built into the unit (who knew it even existed?), along with Mini HDMI, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, headphone, mic, and a media reader.</p>
<p>All told, the UX31E weighs in at three pounds, 2.1 ounces (or 8.3 ounces, if you add the power supply). If going toe-to-toe with Apple’s Air on both design and specs, while beating its price, is what it takes to achieve product hotness, then Asus has done it.</p>
<p><strong>$1,050, <a href="http://www.asus.com" target="_blank">www.asus.com</a></strong></p>
<div class="lowdown">
<div class="module orange-module article-module verdict-block"><span class="module-name-header" style="font-size: 14px; border-bottom: 1px solid #000;">Asus Zenbook UX31E</span><br />
<div class="module-content" style="margin-top: -20px;">
<div class="module-text full">
<div class="product-verdict">
<div class="positive"><span class="header">HOTTY<br /></span>
<p>Stunning design; strong performance; SATA 6Gb/s SSD.</p>
</div>
<div class="negative"><span class="header">HAUGHTY<br /></span>
<p>128GB storage and no way to upgrade it.</p>
</div>
<div class="verdict"><img src="/sites/maximumpc.com/themes/maximumpc/i/mxpc_9ka.jpg" alt="score:9ka" title="score:9ka" width="210" height="80" /></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="module orange-module article-module"><span class="module-name">Specifications</span><br />
<div class="module-content">
<div class="module-text full">
<div class="spec-table orange">
<table style="width: 100%; height: 171px;" border="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>CPU</td>
<td>1.7GHz Intel Core i5-2557M</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>RAM</td>
<td>4GB DDR3/1333</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Chipset</td>
<td>Intel QS67</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Display</td>
<td>13.3-inch, LED backlit@1600x900</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Storage</td>
<td>SanDisk U100 128GB SSD</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Connectivity</td>
<td>1 USB 2.0, 1 USB 3.0, Mini VGA, Mini HDMI, headphone, mic, webcam, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Lap/Carry</td>
<td>3 lbs, 2.1 oz / 3 lbs, 8.3 oz</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="module orange-module article-module"><span class="module-name">BENCHMARKS</span><br />
<div class="module-content">
<div class="module-text full">
<div class="spec-table orange">
<table style="width: 100%; height: 170px;" border="0">
<thead>
<tr>
<th class="head-empty"></th>
<th class="head-light">Zero Point</th>
<th class="head-light">Asus Zenbook UX31E</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Premiere Pro CS3 (sec)</td>
<td>1,260</td>
<td>1,080 <span style="color: #339966;">(16.7%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Photoshop CS3 (sec)</td>
<td>183.6</td>
<td>168.3 <span style="color: #339966;">(9.1%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Proshow Producer (sec)</td>
<td>1,533</td>
<td>1,347 <span style="color: #339966;">(13.8%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>MainConcept (sec)</td>
<td>2,530</td>
<td>2,354 <span style="color: #339966;">(7.5%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Quake III (fps)</td>
<td>191.7</td>
<td>217.3 <span style="color: #339966;">(13.4%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Quake 4 (fps)</td>
<td>17</td>
<td>46.6 <span style="color: #339966;">(174.1%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Battery Life (min)</td>
<td>240</td>
<td>310 <span style="color: #339966;">(29.2%)</span></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p><em>Our zero-point ultraportable is an HP EliteBook 2540p with a 2.13GHz Intel Core i7-640LM, 4GB of DDR3/1333 RAM, integrated graphics, a 250GB, 5,400rpm hard drive, and Windows 7 Professional 64-bit</em></p>
<hr />
<h2 style="clear:both;">Lenovo IdeaPad U300s</h2>
<h3>Hits all the right notes except price</h3>
<p>Lenovo also brings its A-game to the Ultrabook party. And well it should, since it’s asking almost $1,500 for the IdeaPad U300s. That’s premium, business-ultraportable price territory. It’s therefore apropos that the U300s has the most businessy aesthetic, although not at the sake of sleek design. Like the Asus UX31E and the MacBook Air, the U300s is crafted from a single-sheet of aluminum. It eschews the wedge form factor established by Apple and instead uniquely mimics the lines of a hardbound book, with the top and bottom edges protruding slightly all the way around the perimeter, the way a book’s covers protrude past the pages. It makes for a distinct and pleasing silhouette.</p>
<p>Both bottom and top are dark gray—Graphite Gray, to use Lenovo’s parlance (Clementine Orange is also an option)—while the deck and screen bezel are matte silver. The inside is clean and minimalist, consisting of a power button, island keyboard, and large clickpad. The Shift, Enter, Caps, Tab, and Backspace keys are all slightly shortened, but typing on the U300s was a mostly comfortable, trouble-free affair, and the glass-surfaced clickpad is sublime.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/lenovoideapadu300s-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/lenovoideapadu300s-small.jpg" width="500" height="387" /></a><br /><strong>We love that the U300s's deck is free of third-party branding, but that tack helps pay the rent.</strong></p>
<p>Ports include one USB 3.0, one USB 2.0, full-size HDMI, and a headphone/mic combo. Lenovo is alone in this pack for excluding a media reader. A small button on the notebook’s left side launches Lenovo’s OneKey Recovery, which walks you through creating a system image that can be launched from the same button should your system fail. The U300s also supports Intel’s Wireless Display technology. So with a WiDi adapter (purchased separately) attached to your TV, you can stream any content from your notebook via Intel’s software.</p>
<p>Enough with the extras, how 'bout the hard stuff? The U300s is powered by a Core i7-2677M, which is clocked just a hair above the Core i5 in the Asus UX31E, at 1.8GHz. The two units traded wins in the benchmarks, although the U300s performed significantly better than the UX31E in Photoshop, for inexplicable reasons. In Quake III, the U300s suffered the fate of all single-channel RAM configs. For storage, Lenovo taps a comparatively spacious 256GB SSD. It’s a SATA 3Gb/s device using a year-old J Micron controller, but it comes close to maximum bandwidth, and subjectively speaking, the U300s feels plenty snappy. It was the quickest to boot to Windows, posting 17 seconds flat.</p>
<p>The U300s’s screen quality is on par with the UX31E’s, albeit at a lower res of 1366x768. Battery life for the two was also similar, exceeding five hours. Lenovo, however, had the speediest recharge, hitting 50 percent in 30 minutes.</p>
<p>So, yes, the U300s offers a good deal of quality for the price. But it’s nonetheless costly, and by contrast, the Asus UX31E is the better Ultrabook value.</p>
<p><strong>$1,495, <a href="http://www.lenovo.com" target="_blank">www.lenovo.com</a></strong></p>
<div class="lowdown">
<div class="module orange-module article-module verdict-block"><span class="module-name-header" style="font-size: 14px; border-bottom: 1px solid #000;">Lenovo IdeaPad U300s</span><br />
<div class="module-content" style="margin-top: -20px;">
<div class="module-text full">
<div class="product-verdict">
<div class="positive"><span class="header">ULTRABOOK<br /></span>
<p>Attractive design; high quality; Core i7 and 256GB SSD.</p>
</div>
<div class="negative"><span class="header">ULTRABROKE<br /></span>
<p>Expensive; no media reader; lower-res screen than UX31E.</p>
</div>
<div class="verdict"><img src="/sites/maximumpc.com/themes/maximumpc/i/mxpc_8.jpg" alt="score:8" title="score:8" width="210" height="80" /></div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="module orange-module article-module"><span class="module-name">Specifications</span><br />
<div class="module-content">
<div class="module-text full">
<div class="spec-table orange">
<table style="width: 100%; height: 171px;" border="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>CPU</td>
<td>1.8GHz Intel Core i7-2677M</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>RAM</td>
<td>4GB DDR3/1333</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Chipset</td>
<td>Intel QS67</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Display</td>
<td>13.3-inch, 1366x768</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Storage</td>
<td>256GB SSD</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Connectivity</td>
<td>1 USB 2.0, 1 USB 3.0, HDMI, headphone/mic, webcam, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Lap/Carry</td>
<td>2 lbs, 14.7 oz / 3 lbs, 8.4 oz</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="module orange-module article-module"><span class="module-name">BENCHMARKS</span><br />
<div class="module-content">
<div class="module-text full">
<div class="spec-table orange">
<table style="width: 100%; height: 170px;" border="0">
<thead>
<tr>
<th class="head-empty"></th>
<th class="head-light">Zero Point</th>
<th class="head-light">Lenovo IdeaPad U300s</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Premiere Pro CS3 (sec)</td>
<td>1,260</td>
<td>1,140 <span style="color: #339966;">(10.5%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Photoshop CS3 (sec)</td>
<td>183.6</td>
<td>111 <span style="color: #339966;">(65.4%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Proshow Producer (sec)</td>
<td>1,533</td>
<td>1,396 <span style="color: #339966;">(9.8%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>MainConcept (sec)</td>
<td>2,530</td>
<td>2,259 <span style="color: #339966;">(12.0%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Quake III (fps)</td>
<td>191.7</td>
<td>185.3 <span style="color: #ff0000;">(-3.3%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Quake 4 (fps)</td>
<td>17</td>
<td>41.9 <span style="color: #339966;">(146.5%)</span></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Battery Life (min)</td>
<td>240</td>
<td>310 <span style="color: #339966;">(29.2%)</span></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<p><em>Our zero-point ultraportable is an HP EliteBook 2540p with a 2.13GHz Intel Core i7-640LM, 4GB of DDR3/1333 RAM, integrated graphics, a 250GB, 5,400rpm hard drive, and Windows 7 Professional 64-bit</em></p>
<hr />
<h2 style="clear:both;">Inside Out: Anatomy of An Ultrabook</h2>
<p>On the whole, Ultrabooks aren't the most upgrade-friendly devices. Of the four we reviewed, only the Asus and the Toshiba models seem to grant interior access that doesn't entail potential damage to the machine—and even those devices each require the removal of 12 screws, plus the use of a tiny security bit, in the case of the Toshiba. Here's what Toshiba's Z835 packs under the hood.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/ultrabooks-guts-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/ultrabooks-guts-small.jpg" width="563" height="480" /></a></p>
<ol>
<li><strong>USB 3.0</strong>: Like most of the Ultrabooks here, the Z835 features USB 3.0. It comes compliments of an NEC controller.</li>
<li><strong>CPU</strong>: To save space, the Z835's Core i3-2367 uses a ball-grid array, soldered to the board, rather than a higher-profile socket. That negates a future CPU upgrade.</li>
<li><strong>RAM</strong>: The memory configuration is interesting, consisting of a 2GB SO-DIMM that can easily be upgraded, as well as 2GB of memory soldered to the board.</li>
<li><strong>SSD</strong>: A standard mSATA drive allows a future swap out—a nice consolation since the 128GB Toshiba drive that comes with the Z835 is small, as well as slow by SSD standards.</li>
</ol>
<h2>The Upshot on Ultrabooks</h2>
<h3>Where do they stand in the "must-have" product universe?</h3>
<p>Now that we’ve seen what Ultrabooks have to offer, we can fairly say the category has promise. Intel’s success with Sandy Bridge, its strong desire to keep the ARM crowd at bay, and its deep pockets have spurred impressive strides in device development—shoot, two months ago, we couldn’t have imagined an ultraportable as capable and attractive as Asus’s UX31E fetching anything less than $1,400. To see a first-gen product of that caliber hovering just above a grand says something.</p>
<p>Are Ultrabooks ready to overtake tablets? Probably not—right now. Granted, even the current crop’s mix of stylishness, generous battery life, fast boots, and real PC performance will give some tablet shoppers pause when weighing the pros and cons of each device class. But the prices of Ultrabooks are still a little high (particularly for the more lustworthy models) to compete with $200-$500 tabbies.</p>
<p>And then there’s that little matter of touch. For the time being, Ultrabooks don’t come with touchscreens—a primary factor in tablets’ appeal. Nor do Ultrabooks hook into an app marketplace. Expect those things to change with the release of Windows 8 in 2012. Win8’s Metro UI will not only look the part of a mobile OS, but also be optimized for touch, and rumor has it the OS will include an integrated app store.</p>
<p>Yes, a touchscreen has the potential to add to an Ultrabook’s cost, but Intel is already working on that. At the Intel Capital Global Summit in November, CEO Paul Otellini made it clear that touch-based Ultrabooks will be a big focus for the company in 2012. Part of that includes getting the cost of touch down. Intel’s $300 million Ultrabook fund will help with that. Ultimately, Otellini wants to see Windows 8 touch-based Ultrabooks starting at $699.</p>
<p>Ivy Bridge will also figure prominently in Ultrabooks’ future. Intel’s next CPU will be manufactured on a 22nm tri-gate process, making it more power efficient than Sandy Bridge chips, and it will feature an entirely new graphics core that’s reportedly going to offer 50 percent better performance than Sandy Bridge in 3D games and feature DirectX 11 support, to boot.</p>
<p>All told, there’s potential here for these devices to be tablet killers—if value and functionality mean anything. For now, though, Ultrabooks should at least make portable-PC shoppers happy. All the models we reviewed here represent a big shift in the laptop landscape, from design, to form factor, to price. Yes, Asus’s UX31E offers the most compelling mix of all these factors, but we believe that Ultrabooks as a whole have serious merit as ultraportable general-purpose PCs.</p>
<div class="module orange-module article-module"><span class="module-name">BENCHMARKS</span><br />
<div class="module-content">
<div class="module-text full">
<div class="spec-table orange">
<table style="width: 100%; height: 170px;" border="0">
<thead>
<tr>
<th class="head-empty"></th>
<th class="head-light">Acer S3</th>
<th class="head-light">Toshiba Z835</th>
<th>Asus UX31E</th>
<th>Lenovo U300s</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Premiere Pro CS3 (sec)</td>
<td>1,200</td>
<td>1,620</td>
<td>1,080*</td>
<td>1,140</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Photoshop CS3 (sec)</td>
<td>162.5</td>
<td>220.5</td>
<td>168.3</td>
<td>111*</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Proshow Producer (sec)</td>
<td>1,497</td>
<td>2,075</td>
<td>1,347*</td>
<td>1,396</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>MainConcept (sec)</td>
<td>2,591</td>
<td>3,660</td>
<td>2,354</td>
<td>2,259*</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>CrystalDiskMark</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
<td>&nbsp;</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Seq. read</td>
<td>85.33</td>
<td>187</td>
<td>462.5*</td>
<td>248</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Seq. write</td>
<td>83.95</td>
<td>49.23</td>
<td>341.4*</td>
<td>187.3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Quake III (fps)</td>
<td>168.8</td>
<td>159.3</td>
<td>217.3*</td>
<td>185.3</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Quake 4 (fps)</td>
<td>38.5</td>
<td>38.4</td>
<td>46.6*</td>
<td>41.9</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Battery Life (min)</td>
<td>252</td>
<td>297</td>
<td>310</td>
<td>312*</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/ultrabook_ultra-roundup_4_top-notch_notebooks_reviewed_and_compared#comments2012acer aspire s3asus zenbook ux31eHardwarejanuary 2012lenovo ideapad u300stoshiba portege z835ultrabookConsumer NotebooksReviewsNotebooksFrom the MagazineFeaturesMon, 06 Feb 2012 21:24:07 +0000Katherine Stevenson22227 at http://www.maximumpc.comHead to Head: Amazon Kindle Fire vs. Barnes & Noble Nook Tablethttp://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/head_head_amazon_kindle_fire_vs_barnes_noble_nook_tablet
<!--paging_filter--><p>If you can’t beat Apple’s iPad, change the rules of the game. Amazon and Barnes &amp; Noble are taking a bath on sales of the $199 Kindle Fire and the $249 Nook Tablet, respectively, and making up for it with profits on sales of electronic merchandise (e-books, videos, music, and apps). The strategy has succeeded in moving a lot of hardware, with each company on track to sell millions of units (although the ratio of Kindle Fire to Nook Tablet sales is greatly in Amazon’s favor so far). Both tablets feature nearly identical 7-inch, 1024x600 LCDs and rely on Wi-Fi for connectivity. Which should tempt you away from the high-end tablets? Only a bloody-knuckled deathmatch will tell.</p>
<div style="float: left; width: 303px; margin: 15px 5px 15px auto;">
<p style="text-align:center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/h2h-kindlefire-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/h2h-kindlefire-small_0.jpg" width="300" height="433" /></a><br /><strong>Like the Nook, the Kindle Fire experience relies on your burning desire for consuming magazines, books, videos, and more through its compact form factor.</strong></p>
</div>
<div style="float: left; width: 303px; margin: 15px auto 15px 5px;">
<p style="text-align:center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/h2h-bnnook-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/h2h-bnnook-small.jpg" width="300" height="433" /></a><br /><strong>At 14.1 ounces, the wider, longer, thinner Nook Tablet weighs a half-ounce less than the Fire.</strong></p>
</div>
<h3 style="clear:both;">Round 1: Design</h3>
<p>If a plain black slab with a screen is your cup of tea, then drink in the Kindle Fire. Its headphone output and power button (its lone hardware control) are uncomfortably close to its Micro USB port (used for charging and file transfers) across the bottom of the tablet.</p>
<p>No doubt the prettier option, the Nook Tablet sports a raised silver-gray bezel and coated backplate that, in concert with the hollowed-out corner for the microSD slot, give the Nook a visual flare and render it the grippier tablet. The Nook’s hardware volume controls and menu button also score it points. The Kindle Fire offers two speakers to the Nook’s one; but the difference is negligible, and only the Nook offers a built-in microphone.</p>
<p><strong>Winner: Nook Tablet</strong></p>
<h3>Round 2: User Interface</h3>
<p>Both tablets break a sweat obliterating the UI confines of the Android 2.3 OS they’re built on. The Kindle Fire’s bookshelf-themed homepage displays your favorite and most recently visited web pages, apps, documents, and more, with menu tabs labeled Books, Music, Video, Apps, Web, and so on. It’s a departure from the stock Android UI, but it’s more user friendly than the Nook Tablet’s storefront-feeling UI, which also insists on using “shelves” to display your various media, apps, and files.</p>
<p>The Nook Tablet, on the other hand, preserves more Android functionality, including customizable home screens that help you bypass its convoluted Library shelves. The Nook Tablet’s browser displays more web-page content per screen; and we like its hard menu button, which calls up a shortcut menu for apps, URLs, settings, and more.</p>
<p><strong>Winner: Nook Tablet</strong></p>
<h3>Round 3: Storage</h3>
<p>You might think that the Nook Tablet’s 16GB of onboard memory combined with its microSD slot means game over for the 8GB, nonexpandable Kindle Fire. But the Nook Tablet reserves most of its onboard memory for content purchased from Barnes &amp; Noble, leaving you just 1GB for everything else. The playing field levels further when you take into account Amazon’s free cloud storage for all Amazon media purchases, plus the 5GB of free cloud storage the company provides for storing your files.</p>
<p>The Nook Tablet can accommodate a microSD card with up to 32GB of capacity, but no card of any capacity is included in the purchase price. What’s more, you must use a computer to transfer files from a memory card to its internal memory. Such lameness defies description, leaving this round a push.</p>
<p><strong>Winner: Tie</strong></p>
<h3>Round 4: Performance</h3>
<p>While both contestants enter the ring armed with 1GHz dual-core CPUs, the Nook Tablet packs 1GB RAM while the Fire has just 512MB. The Nook Tablet’s additional memory resulted in smoother screen refreshes while reading, web browsing, playing games, streaming video, and so on. Netflix video streams looked much better on the Nook Tablet, and it delivered slightly longer battery life: We streamed Netflix videos on it for more than six hours. B&amp;N’s device delivered better touchscreen responsiveness, too; there were far too many times when we had to repeatedly tap the Fire’s screen before it would register.</p>
<p>Amazon’s much-hyped Silk browser put a hurt on the Nook Tablet’s browser in terms of the SunSpider and BrowserMark benchmarks, consistently outperforming the Nook by 25 to 40 percent. In real-world use, however, the Nook Tablet loaded websites as fast or faster than the Fire.</p>
<p><strong>Winner: Nook Tablet</strong></p>
<h3>Round 5: Content Ecosystem</h3>
<p>Barnes &amp; Noble claims to stock “thousands” of apps in the Nook store. After browsing the entire site, we’d say “hundreds” is more like it. A vast number of popular Android apps are MIA here, and many apps that are free in other marketplaces must be purchased for the Nook Tablet. Unlike the Fire, the Nook Tablet will not sideload apps, either; it refuses to even recognize .apk files. Amazon’s app store, by comparison, is a Shangri-La of software choices. While it could be argued that the Kindle and Nook e-reader systems are roughly equal in both features and inventory, Amazon’s music and video marketplace is far more robust, and Amazon has the aforementioned cloud storage plus superior tools for synching your purchases to multiple devices. And for $79 per year, Amazon Prime serves up thousands of free movies and TV shows, Kindle book borrowing, and free two-day shipping for Amazon orders.</p>
<p><strong>Winner: Tie</strong></p>
<h3>And the Winner Is…</h3>
<p>The Nook Tablet was ahead on points going into the final round, but the <strong>Kindle Fire</strong> unleashed a flurry of value-added blows in the form of Amazon’s cloud storage, massive music and video library (available for sale or rent), and decent app store that knocked the Nook into sweet oblivion. Superior hardware empowers the Nook Tablet to beat the Kindle Fire in some areas (particularly video streaming), but Barnes &amp; Noble’s device is just too limited to be a full-featured tablet. Our opinion might change once we can jailbreak it and install a custom ROM, but the Kindle Fire is the better tablet right out of the box.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/h2h-kindlefire-slant-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/h2h-kindlefire-slant-small.jpg" width="282" height="480" /></a></p>
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/head_head_amazon_kindle_fire_vs_barnes_noble_nook_tablet#comments2012amazonAndroid Tablete-readerhead to headjanuary 2012kindlenookFrom the MagazineFeaturesFri, 03 Feb 2012 22:24:06 +0000Markkus Rovito22317 at http://www.maximumpc.comWD TV Live Vs. NetGear NeoTV: Streamer Showdownhttp://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/wd_tv_live_vs_netgear_neotv_streamer_showdown
<!--paging_filter--><h3>One of these things is not like the other</h3>
<p>Media streamers like the Western Digital WD TV Live and Netgear NeoTV make just a little less sense than they did a couple of years ago. In those days, they were the perfect alternative to stuffing a home theater PC into your entertainment center. These days, you can get nearly all the same functionality from a new Blu-ray player or a Smart TV.</p>
<p>On the other hand, the latest incarnations of these two products cost less than a new Blu-ray player, and they’re several orders of magnitude cheaper than a new HDTV (or a home theater PC, for that matter). And while they do have some features in common, the NeoTV delivers far fewer features than the WD TV Live and is priced accordingly, so we’re not making a direct head-to-head comparison between the two here.</p>
<h3>Western Digital WD TV Live</h3>
<p>For a company whose primary business is manufacturing hard drives, Western Digital sure knows a lot about digital media and how to stream it over a network. Each succeeding generation of the company’s WD TV Live product has led the market in terms of features, price, and performance, and this one is no different.</p>
<p>With this incarnation, WD adds several new services (including Hulu Plus and Spotify), a collection of simple online games, an integrated Wi-Fi adapter, and even the ability to decode Dolby TrueHD. Unlike the pricier WD TV Live Hub, which remains in Western Digital’s lineup, this product does not include any local storage. But it is equipped with two USB 2.0 ports, so you can easily connect a portable drive. You can also connect a USB keyboard, which makes initial setup (entering Wi-Fi and network user IDs and passwords, for instance) considerably easier than hunting and pecking using the remote and the onscreen keyboard.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/wdtvlive-frontremote-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/wdtvlive-frontremote-small.jpg" width="620" height="298" /></a><br /><strong>The third-generation WD TV Live is thinner and more capable than previous models, and the remote is significantly better.</strong></p>
<p>Most people will connect the WD TV Live to their entertainment system using the HDMI 1.4 port (you’ll need to provide your own cable), but the device will happily accommodate older equipment with its analog A/V and digital S/PDIF outputs. There’s also an Ethernet port in the back panel, but the integrated 802.11b/g/n wireless client adapter proved plenty fast for streaming video at 720p—an impressive achievement, considering that we tested the box in a room-within-a-room home theater at Maximum PC Lab North. We needed a hardwired connection to stream video at 1080p. Image quality was excellent.</p>
<p>The remote is easily the best that WD has come up with so far, with a molded grip that feels very natural in either hand. We needed to bend our thumb to reach the alpha-numeric keypad on the bottom half the device, but we seldom use those buttons, anyway. We used the home, arrow, mute, and transport (play/pause, stop, fast forward/rewind, and skip forward/back) buttons far more frequently, and those are all within easy reach. The remote also has four shortcut buttons—labeled A, B, C, and D—that can be custom programmed.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/wdtvlive-io-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/wdtvlive-io-small.jpg" width="620" height="170" /></a><br /><strong>Plenty of device support here, with both analog and digital audio and video outputs.</strong></p>
<p>Western Digital offers a strong collection of online movie and music services in addition to the new ones mentioned earlier. You’ll find all the old standbys here, including Netflix, YouTube, and Pandora; but you’ll also get CinemaNow, Blockbuster on Demand, Live365, and several others. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to tap what we consider to be the best online, on-demand movie service of them all: Vudu. Western Digital does deserve praise for its broad media file and container file support, which includes the video standards AVI, MKV, MPEG-1/2/4, h.264, VOB, and M2TS (the container for Blu-ray movies); the audio formats AAC, FLAC, OGG, and MP3 (including 24-bit/48kHz FLAC); and the digital photo formats BMP, JPEG, and PNG. The device supports playlists and subtitles, too.</p>
<p>The WD TV Live is the best full-featured media streamer you can buy today, but we’d like it even more if it included Vudu.</p>
<p>(Note: After our review went out, Western Digital added Vudu as well as remote control via Android and iOS devices via a firmware update.)</p>
<div class="verdict" style="float: left; display: inline; margin: 0 10px 20px 0;"><img src="http://www.maximumpc.com/sites/maximumpc.com/themes/maximumpc/i/mxpc_9ka.jpg" alt="score:9ka" title="score:9ka" width="210" height="80" /></div>
<div style="float: left; display: inline;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><strong>Western Digital WD TV Live</strong></span><strong><br />$120 street</strong><br /><strong><a href="http://www.wdc.com" target="_blank">www.wdc.com</a><br /></strong></div>
<h3 style="clear:both; margin-top:30px;">Netgear NeoTV NTV200</h3>
<p>Craving a spot at the commercial online media buffet, but not at all interested in ripping your own media? Netgear has just the right dish. The NeoTV taps your broadband connection to serve up Netflix, Vudu, Pandora, YouTube, Picasa, and plenty of other online services; but it can’t tap media stored on your own network, and it doesn’t have any USB ports to access local storage.</p>
<p>We initially considered this to be a major disappointment: If you own a late-model Blu-ray player or a Smart TV, the NeoTV has very little to offer. But plenty of us haven’t made such investments, and if online entertainment is all you’re looking for, Netgear’s device costs $40 less than Western Digital’s. You’re not getting as many features, but you’re&nbsp; also not being forced to pay for features you won’t utilize.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/netgearneotvntv200-frontremote-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/netgearneotvntv200-frontremote-small.jpg" width="600" height="389" /></a><br /><strong>Anyone considering buying one of Roku's streaming boxes should take a long look at what Netgear has to offer with the NeoTV NTV200.</strong></p>
<p>The NeoTV’s built-in 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi adapter performed just as well as the one inside the WD TV Live—we had no problem streaming Netflix and Vudu movies without wires (although we were once again limited to 720p resolution; we needed to plug in a CAT5 cable to enjoy Vudu movies at 1080p). The only other connectivity features on the box are HDMI and S/PDIF—there’s no support for analog audio or video devices at all.</p>
<p>Netgear provides a very basic remote control with the NeoTV. We have no complaint with the button layout, and we like the clicky, tactile feel it provides much better than the mushy buttons on Western Digital’s controller; but there’s no alpha-numeric keypad for typing search queries (you must use the arrow buttons to navigate an onscreen keyboard), and there’s no mute button. But Netgear redeems itself with a free app that will turn your iPhone or Android phone into a compatible remote. That’s sure to come in handy when the regular remote’s two coin batteries crap out late one evening.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/netgearneotvntv200-iphone-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/netgearneotvntv200-iphone-small.jpg" width="243" height="480" /></a><br /><strong>Netgear's app lets you use your smartphone as a remote.</strong></p>
<p>There's also a very good collection of streaming media services on tap. While Western Digital scores a big win with its support for Spotify, Netgear can deliver movies in HD and in surround sound on demand via Vudu. And if you’re a Napster subscriber, you can listen to your tunes on the NeoTV, but not on the WD TV Live. There’s a long list of other less interesting services, including a host of video podcasts (does anyone actually watch those?) and some very basic online games (the same ones that Western Digital offers, including Black Jack Royale, Kaboom, Sudoku, and Texas Hold ‘Em).</p>
<p>Enthusiasts will want more than what the NeoTV delivers, but this is a good product to recommend to friends and family who just want an easy way to stream media from the Internet to their entertainment center.</p>
<div class="verdict" style="float: left; display: inline; margin: 0 10px 20px 0;"><img src="http://www.maximumpc.com/sites/maximumpc.com/themes/maximumpc/i/mxpc_8.jpg" alt="score:8" title="score:8" width="210" height="80" /></div>
<div style="float: left; display: inline;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><strong>Netgear NeoTV NTV200</strong></span><strong><br />$80</strong><br /><strong><a href="http://www.netgear.com" target="_blank">www.netgear.com</a><br /></strong></div>
http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/wd_tv_live_vs_netgear_neotv_streamer_showdown#comments2012Hardwarejanuary 2012netgear neotv ntv200roundupwestern digital wd tv liveMedia StreamingReviewsFrom the MagazineFeaturesThu, 02 Feb 2012 21:23:40 +0000Michael Brown22336 at http://www.maximumpc.comFalcon Northwest Mach V Icon 2 Reviewhttp://www.maximumpc.com/falcon_northwest_mach_v_icon_2_review
<!--paging_filter--><h3>It's more a work of art than a PC</h3>
<p>You can’t truly appreciate the paint job on Falcon Northwest’s Mach V unless you can fondle it. We mean it—you just can’t comprehend how damn smooth the paint is without lovingly stroking your hand on the side of this beauty as if you were a presidential candidate.</p>
<p>Inside the Mach V, you’ll find a pedigree of hardware to match its stunning exterior. Intel’s top gun—the 3.3GHz Core i7-3960X—gets top billing, of course. This hexa-core chip simply makes all other chips before it—quad- or hexa-core—seem downright weak. Falcon mates the chip with a top-end Asus Rampage IV Extreme board. In addition to sporting the very cool ability to update the BIOS from a USB key without a CPU or RAM installed, the Rampage IV caters to extreme overclockers with such over-the-top tricks as an “overclocking key.” The overclocking key is an external video dongle that lets you display an overlay of any of the CPU’s temps and various voltages on a single-link monitor in real time.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/falconmachvicon2-beauty-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/falconmachvicon2-beauty-small.jpg" width="373" height="480" /></a><br /><strong>Sometimes, it's the outside…</strong></p>
<p>Why would anyone ever want to do this? Believe it or not, extreme overclockers need the information in real time during their liquid-nitrogen escapades, and this feature can save them the price of buying a very expensive Fluke meter.</p>
<p>The Mach V, of course, doesn’t run on liquid helium or liquid nitrogen; it uses a Cool-It Eco II ALC cooler, which enables the CPU to go from a stock 3.3GHz all the way to 4.4GHz. Falcon takes full advantage of the Intel X79 chipset’s support for eight DIMM slots, too, fully populating the board with 32GB of DDR3/1600 RAM. We know 32GB is overkill, but there’s some appeal to it: We’re talking RAM disk, baby! Sure, an SSD can post read speeds of 500MB/s, but a RAM disk can post a staggering 4,000MB/s! It’s a small RAM disk, but it delivers phenomenal disk I/O. For graphics, Falcon outfits the Mach V with a pair of EVGA GeForce GTX 580 Classified cards. These aren’t just overclocked cards, mind you, they also pack massive 3GB frame buffers—double the size of a standard GTX 580 card.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/falconmachvicon2-guts-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/falconmachvicon2-guts-small.jpg" width="439" height="480" /></a><br /><strong>…AND the inside that matters.</strong></p>
<p>So how does the Falcon stack up? It’s wicked fast and handily pounds the crap out of our elderly zero-point system, as well as the majority of the Core i7-990X boxes we’ve tested in the last year. But how does it stack up against the Digital Storm HailStorm we reviewed in the Holiday 2011 issue? There’s the rub: Digital Storm clocked its Core i7-3960X part even higher, to 4.7GHz. That 7 percent edge gives DStorm’s system a boost in just about everything that’s processor bound. Digital Storm also takes the lead in gaming performance, thanks to its tri-SLI GTX 580 configuration. That design choice endows the DStorm with a 20 percent boost in most high-res games. Yeah, we know, a pair of GTX 580s is crazy fast for every game out today; but three of a kind trumps a pair, no matter how you cut the benchmarks.</p>
<p>We have to note, however, that the Digital Storm rig costs about $400 more than this Falcon. Still, when each price tag is pushing $7,000, it’s hard to snivel over a few hundred bucks. The Falcon Mach V is the sexier beast, though; and make no mistake: She’s fast enough for you, old man; she’s just not the fastest machine we’ve tested.</p>
<p><strong>$6,993, <a href="http://www.falcon-nw.com" target="_blank">www.falcon-nw.com</a></strong></p>
http://www.maximumpc.com/falcon_northwest_mach_v_icon_2_review#comments2012Consumer Desktopsfalcon northwestHardwarejanuary 2012mach v icon 2sandy bridge-eReviewsSystemsFrom the MagazineMon, 30 Jan 2012 20:52:44 +0000Gordon Mah Ung22197 at http://www.maximumpc.comGigabyte GTX 580 Super Overclock Reviewhttp://www.maximumpc.com/gigabyte_gtx_580_super_overclock_review
<!--paging_filter--><h3>Will three fans enable Gigabyte to capture the single-GPU performance crown?</h3>
<p>We found the <a href="http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/asus_matrix_gtx_580_platinum_review" target="_blank">Asus Matrix GTX 580 Platinum</a> that we reviewed in the November 2011 issue to be pretty badass: It’s a solid, factory-overclocked card that’s impressively easy to push even harder. But it’s also three slots wide and requires two 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Gigabyte’s GTX 580 Super Overclock (model GV-N580SO-15L) takes Nvidia’s GPU even further, pumping the core from a stock 772MHz all the way to 855MHz, and the card’s 1.5GB of GDDR5 memory from a stock 1,002MHz to 1,025MHz (the Matrix GTX 580 comes out of the box with its GPU running at 816MHz and its memory at 1,002MHz). And the Gigabyte takes up only two slots and uses just a single 8-pin power connector.</p>
<p>Gigabyte, like Asus, provides software to help you overclock the card even more, but Gigabyte’s card lacks the other engineering amenities that Asus provides, including voltage control, insta-max fan speed, and reset-to-factory-settings buttons. This renders Gigabyte’s offering less forgiving when it comes to pushing the envelope. The Super OC ships with three cooling fans, which must be better than the two on the Matrix, right? Well, the card remained cool enough during our benchmarks, but we also found it to be noisier under load than the Matrix card.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/gigabyte580superoc-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/gigabyte580superoc-small.jpg" width="600" height="398" /></a><br /><strong>Gigabyte's GTX 580 Super Overclock requires just two expansion slots and one 8-pin PCIe power connection.</strong></p>
<p>With those thoughts in mind, let’s discuss performance: Gigabyte’s card edged out Asus’s, but it was by no means a clean sweep: the Asus Matrix card won several benchmark categories, with Unigine Heaven being the most notable. Several other results—including Just Cause 2 and Metro 2033—were essentially ties. So the Gigabyte’s performance is pretty good, but it’s not quite as over-the-top as we had expected. Also, take a look at the difference in power consumption. This is where Asus’s careful binning of GTX 580 GPUs comes in: The Matrix consumes much less juice than the Super Overclock, which likely will leave you more headroom for overclocking.</p>
<p>All these factors are reflected in the card’s street price, which is $10 less than the Asus (and Gigabyte was offering a $20 rebate at press time). So the Super Overclock delivers fewer features and a little less performance and headroom, but also a lower price tag. You’ll need to decide which factors are most important to you.</p>
<p><strong>$520, <a href="http://www.gigabyte.com" target="_blank">www.gigabyte.com</a></strong></p>
http://www.maximumpc.com/gigabyte_gtx_580_super_overclock_review#comments2012gigabytegtx 580gtx 580 super overclockHardwareHardwarejanuary 2012nvidiaReviewsVideocardsFrom the MagazineThu, 26 Jan 2012 17:32:46 +0000Loyd Case22200 at http://www.maximumpc.comCooler Master Hyper 212 Evo Reviewhttp://www.maximumpc.com/cooler_master_hyper_212_evo_review
<!--paging_filter--><h3>The low-cost champion, evolved</h3>
<p>Frequent Maximum PC readers will have noticed our love affair with Cooler Master’s Hyper 212 Plus CPU cooler. The 212 Plus came out of nowhere and captured our hearts—and a spot on our Best of the Best list—with its excellent cooling power and rock-bottom $30 price tag way back in 2009. It’s not the best CPU cooler we’ve tested, but we’ve installed it in virtually every stock-clocked PC we’ve built since, thanks to its unbeatable price/performance ratio. Cooler Master’s all-new Hyper 212 Evo costs five dollars more than the Plus. But is it five dollars better?</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/cmhyper212evo-01-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/cmhyper212evo-01-small.jpg" width="550" height="398" /></a><br /><strong>Besides the heat pipes, the Evo's translucent PWM fan is the only difference between this and previous iterations of the Hyper 212 CPU cooler.</strong></p>
<p>Like its predecessor, the Evo is a skyscraper-style heatsink with four direct-contact heat pipes rising through a stack of aluminum cooling fins. It’s 6.3 inches tall from the contact plate to the top of the heat pipes, 2 inches deep (3.13 inches after adding one 12cm fan), and 4.7 inches wide. Cooler Master provides a universal mounting bracket that will fit AMD and Intel LGA775, 1155/1156, and 1366 sockets, and a separate one for Socket LGA2011. Four standoff pegs bolt through the motherboard and onto the backplate, and an X-shaped bracket holds the contact plate to the CPU with four spring screws attached to the standoffs. Plastic clips secure the 12cm fan to the heat exchanger in a fashion similar to the most recent 212 Plus coolers we’ve used (the original Hyper used wire clips).</p>
<p>In short, the Evo is identical to its predecessor in every aspect but one: Where the 212 Plus’s heat pipes meet the cooler’s contact plate, small gaps reduce the surface area that is in direct contact with the CPU’s own heat spreader. The bottoms of the Evo’s heat pipes are so flat that these gaps are entirely eliminated.</p>
<p>At our i7-930 test bed’s stock speed of 2.8GHz, it was hard to tell the difference between the two coolers: The Evo ran just over a degree Celsius hotter than the Plus at idle, and just under a degree warmer at 100 percent CPU burn. Both coolers far outperformed our stock cooler, by 4-5 C at idle and by a whopping 14 C at full burn.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/cmhyper212evo-02-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/cmhyper212evo-02-small.jpg" width="550" height="384" /></a><br /><strong>The Hyper 212 Evo's flat direct-contact heat pipes increase the surface area that comes into contact with the CPU's heat spreader.</strong></p>
<p>We didn’t notice a meaningful difference until we cranked up the test bed to our overclocking-challenge speed of 3.9GHz. At full burn, the Evo kept our CPU fully 9 C cooler than its predecessor could manage. Neither part came close to besting our air-cooling champion, Prolimatech’s Armageddon, with this stress test, however; and the stock Intel cooler lasted just 20 seconds before the CPU began to throttle itself.</p>
<p>If you’re already using a Hyper 212 Plus, we don’t see a reason to switch to the Evo unless you’d like to crank your clock speeds a little higher. If you’re building a new rig, or looking to upgrade from a stock cooler, on the other hand, the Evo is a worthy successor to the 212 Plus. Five dollars for a cooler that can keep an overclocked proc 9 C cooler? We’ll take it.</p>
<p>We could wish for an easier mounting bracket, but honestly, the Hyper 212 Evo is a damn-good deal at $35.</p>
<p><strong>$35, <a href="http://www.coolermaster.com" target="_blank">www.coolermaster.com</a></strong></p>
http://www.maximumpc.com/cooler_master_hyper_212_evo_review#comments2012Air CoolingCooler MasterCPU CoolerHardwareHardwareheatsinkhyper 212 evojanuary 2012ReviewsFrom the MagazineWed, 25 Jan 2012 17:15:34 +0000Nathan Edwards22175 at http://www.maximumpc.comAsus P9X79 Deluxe Reviewhttp://www.maximumpc.com/asus_p9x79_deluxe_review
<!--paging_filter--><h3>A deluxe board with an enthusiast price tag</h3>
<p>Let’s be frank: If you’re even thinking about buying into Intel’s deliciously fast LGA2011 platform this early, you are an enthusiast—Enthusiast with a capital-freaking-E, since you can’t even look at LGA2011 without buying a $550 chip.</p>
<p>So if you’re jumping in, you might as well use both feet. Asus’s P9X79 Deluxe certainly fits that bill, delivering cool features and a stout price tag: This X79-based board will set you back a cool $400.</p>
<p>“Deluxe” features on board include digital VRMs, Asus’s trademark UEFI, and built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, with a bundled smartphone app that enables you to remotely overclock and monitor your system. This board also has an all-new feature that lets you use a particular USB port to update its BIOS without a processor installed.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/asusp9x79-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/asusp9x79-small.jpg" width="495" height="480" /></a><br /><strong>The P9X79 Deluxe offers top-notch performance and all the needed amenities.</strong></p>
<p>The P9X79 is an eight-DIMM-slot board, not one of the weaker four-slot boards that limit your upgrade path. The eight-DIMM design will let you build a 32GB PC for less than $200 in memory cost. Doing that on any four-slot board will set you back more than $1,000. What do you do with 32GB? You set up a RAM drive, of course! We set up a RAM drive on this board using eight 4GB sticks of Corsair Vengeance RAM and saw read speeds of 4GB/s. Take that, SSDs!</p>
<p>But what you get in RAM, you lose in storage. The PCH in the X79 has the circuitry to support many more SAS and SATA 6Gb/s ports, but compatibility concerns caused board makers to “de-feature” it at the last minute. So instead of a board bristling with 10 SATA 6Gb/s ports, we get the standard Z68 layout of two SATA 6Gb/s and four SATA 3Gb/s. Asus tries to beef up the board’s six standard ports (four 3Gb/s and two 6Gb/s) with a Marvell 6Gb/s controller that also does SSD caching. Few of us could afford to install that many HDDs given today’s prices, of course, but that doesn’t render the lack of native support any less of a letdown—this is a $400 motherboard, after all.</p>
<p>We fired up Intel’s new DX79SI mobo to compare its performance to that of the P9X79. While we don’t normally expect to see big performance deltas between boards based on the same chipsets, the Asus board generally produced better benchmark numbers, with one significant exception: Intel’s board delivered much faster SATA 6Gb/s write speeds. We normally use OCZ’s Enyo external drive to test USB 3.0 performance, but the P9X79’s USB controller uses the new and speedier UASP protocol, so we also used an OWC SATA 6Gb/s drive inside a new Asus enclosure. With UASP, we saw USB 3.0 speeds climb to a nice 225MB/s read and 217MB/write. We would have liked to compare this to a USB 3.0 enclosure that doesn’t support UASP, but our generic USB 3.0 enclosures don’t seem to like any SATA 6Gb/s drives.</p>
<p>In the end, The P9X79 Deluxe gives you just about everything an enthusiast would truly want: SLI, tri-SLI, CrossFire X, PCIe 3.0, tons of overclocking features, lots of USB 3.0 ports, and truly fast performance (albeit only in comparison to the limited number of X79 boards we’ve seen so far). Now if only it had more SATA 6Gb/s ports and the price wasn’t so painful.</p>
<p><strong>$400, <a href="http://www.asus.com" target="_blank">www.asus.com</a></strong></p>
http://www.maximumpc.com/asus_p9x79_deluxe_review#comments2012asusHardwarejanuary 2012LGA2011p9x79 deluxex79MotherboardsReviewsFri, 20 Jan 2012 19:26:12 +0000Gordon Mah Ung22170 at http://www.maximumpc.comWestern Digital WD TV Live Reviewhttp://www.maximumpc.com/western_digital_wd_tv_live_review
<!--paging_filter--><p>For a company whose primary business is manufacturing hard drives, Western Digital sure knows a lot about digital media and how to stream it over a network. Each succeeding generation of the company’s WD TV Live product has led the market in terms of features, price, and performance, and this one is no different.</p>
<p>With this incarnation, WD adds several new services (including Hulu Plus and Spotify), a collection of simple online games, an integrated Wi-Fi adapter, and even the ability to decode Dolby TrueHD. Unlike the pricier WD TV Live Hub, which remains in Western Digital’s lineup, this product does not include any local storage. But it is equipped with two USB 2.0 ports, so you can easily connect a portable drive. You can also connect a USB keyboard, which makes initial setup (entering Wi-Fi and network user IDs and passwords, for instance) considerably easier than hunting and pecking using the remote and the onscreen keyboard.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/wdtvlive-frontremote-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/wdtvlive-frontremote-small.jpg" width="620" height="298" /></a><br /> <strong>The third-generation WD TV Live is thinner and more capable than previous models, and the remote is significantly better.</strong></p>
<p>Most people will connect the WD TV Live to their entertainment system using the HDMI 1.4 port (you’ll need to provide your own cable), but the device will happily accommodate older equipment with its analog A/V and digital S/PDIF outputs. There’s also an Ethernet port in the back panel, but the integrated 802.11b/g/n wireless client adapter proved plenty fast for streaming video at 720p—an impressive achievement, considering that we tested the box in a room-within-a-room home theater at Maximum PC Lab North. We needed a hardwired connection to stream video at 1080p. Image quality was excellent.</p>
<p>The remote is easily the best that WD has come up with so far, with a molded grip that feels very natural in either hand. We needed to bend our thumb to reach the alpha-numeric keypad on the bottom half the device, but we seldom use those buttons, anyway. We used the home, arrow, mute, and transport (play/pause, stop, fast forward/rewind, and skip forward/back) buttons far more frequently, and those are all within easy reach. The remote also has four shortcut buttons—labeled A, B, C, and D—that can be custom programmed.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/wdtvlive-io-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/wdtvlive-io-small.jpg" width="620" height="170" /></a><br /> <strong>Plenty of device support here, with both analog and digital audio and video outputs.</strong></p>
<p>Western Digital offers a strong collection of online movie and music services in addition to the new ones mentioned earlier. You’ll find all the old standbys here, including Netflix, YouTube, and Pandora; but you’ll also get CinemaNow, Blockbuster on Demand, Live365, and several others. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to tap what we consider to be the best online, on-demand movie service of them all: Vudu. Western Digital does deserve praise for its broad media file and container file support, which includes the video standards AVI, MKV, MPEG-1/2/4, h.264, VOB, and M2TS (the container for Blu-ray movies); the audio formats AAC, FLAC, OGG, and MP3 (including 24-bit/48kHz FLAC); and the digital photo formats BMP, JPEG, and PNG. The device supports playlists and subtitles, too.</p>
<p>The WD TV Live is the best full-featured media streamer you can buy today, but we’d like it even more if it included Vudu.</p>
<p><strong>$120 street, <a href="http://www.wdc.com" target="_blank">www.wdc.com</a></strong></p>
http://www.maximumpc.com/western_digital_wd_tv_live_review#comments2012Hardwarejanuary 2012netgear neotv ntv200western digital wd tv liveMedia StreamingReviewsFrom the MagazineThu, 19 Jan 2012 20:00:33 +0000Michael Brown22335 at http://www.maximumpc.comNetgear NeoTV NTV200 Reviewhttp://www.maximumpc.com/netgear_neotv_ntv200_review
<!--paging_filter--><p>Craving a spot at the commercial online media buffet, but not at all interested in ripping your own media? Netgear has just the right dish. The NeoTV taps your broadband connection to serve up Netflix, Vudu, Pandora, YouTube, Picasa, and plenty of other online services; but it can’t tap media stored on your own network, and it doesn’t have any USB ports to access local storage.</p>
<p>We initially considered this to be a major disappointment: If you own a late-model Blu-ray player or a Smart TV, the NeoTV has very little to offer. But plenty of us haven’t made such investments, and if online entertainment is all you’re looking for, Netgear’s device costs $40 less than Western Digital’s. You’re not getting as many features, but you’re also not being forced to pay for features you won’t utilize.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/netgearneotvntv200-frontremote-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/netgearneotvntv200-frontremote-small.jpg" width="600" height="389" /></a><br /> <strong>Anyone considering buying one of Roku's streaming boxes should take a long look at what Netgear has to offer with the NeoTV NTV200.</strong></p>
<p>The NeoTV’s built-in 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi adapter performed just as well as the one inside the WD TV Live—we had no problem streaming Netflix and Vudu movies without wires (although we were once again limited to 720p resolution; we needed to plug in a CAT5 cable to enjoy Vudu movies at 1080p). The only other connectivity features on the box are HDMI and S/PDIF—there’s no support for analog audio or video devices at all.</p>
<p>Netgear provides a very basic remote control with the NeoTV. We have no complaint with the button layout, and we like the clicky, tactile feel it provides much better than the mushy buttons on Western Digital’s controller; but there’s no alpha-numeric keypad for typing search queries (you must use the arrow buttons to navigate an onscreen keyboard), and there’s no mute button. But Netgear redeems itself with a free app that will turn your iPhone or Android phone into a compatible remote. That’s sure to come in handy when the regular remote’s two coin batteries crap out late one evening.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/netgearneotvntv200-iphone-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/netgearneotvntv200-iphone-small.jpg" width="243" height="480" /></a><br /> <strong>Netgear's app lets you use your smartphone as a remote.</strong></p>
<p>There's also a very good collection of streaming media services on tap. While Western Digital scores a big win with its support for Spotify, Netgear can deliver movies in HD and in surround sound on demand via Vudu. And if you’re a Napster subscriber, you can listen to your tunes on the NeoTV, but not on the WD TV Live. There’s a long list of other less interesting services, including a host of video podcasts (does anyone actually watch those?) and some very basic online games (the same ones that Western Digital offers, including Black Jack Royale, Kaboom, Sudoku, and Texas Hold ‘Em).</p>
<p>Enthusiasts will want more than what the NeoTV delivers, but this is a good product to recommend to friends and family who just want an easy way to stream media from the Internet to their entertainment center.</p>
<p><strong>$80, <a href="http://www.netgear.com" target="_blank">www.netgear.com</a></strong></p>
http://www.maximumpc.com/netgear_neotv_ntv200_review#comments2012Hardwarejanuary 2012netgear neotv ntv200western digital wd tv liveMedia StreamingReviewsFrom the MagazineThu, 19 Jan 2012 19:57:31 +0000Michael Brown22334 at http://www.maximumpc.comBattlefield 3 Reviewhttp://www.maximumpc.com/battlefield_3_review
<!--paging_filter--><h3>Behold the Chimera!</h3>
<p>There is a creature in Greek mythology known as the Chimera. The Chimera was an unholy patchwork of a beast, a combination of lion, snake, and goat. Battlefield 3 is the software equivalent of a Chimera—a beast of a game stitched together from disparate parts.</p>
<p>Battlefield 3’s single-player campaign is undoubtedly the goat. The game resorts to every dirty funneling trick to keep you on its chosen path, ranging from invisible walls to flat-out killing you and forcing a reload if you wander. You’ll spend much of the game running a high-speed conga line with your AI squad mates, dashing from one checkpoint to the next.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/bf3review01-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/bf3review01-small.jpg" width="620" height="349" /></a><br /><strong>Battlefield 3 offers an expansive battlespace that can go from desolate to crowded in a heartbeat on 64-player maps.</strong></p>
<p>The action remains maddeningly scripted when you reach those checkpoints. Ever-present mortar, grenade, and rocket explosions, combined with seemingly random enemy spawns, leave you waiting behind cover while the game essentially plays itself. Make your presence felt and your AI squad mates will do their best to get you killed by bumping into you, shoving you out of “their” cover, and getting in the way of your shots, all while the enemy seems to target you exclusively.</p>
<p>And if ever there was a game you didn't want to play staring at teammates’ backs, it's Battlefield 3. This game boasts the most photorealistic graphics we've ever seen, with crisp textures, smooth animation, and almost no texture pop-in, a feat made all the more impressive by the game’s high fidelity and remarkable draw distance. The Frostbite 2 engine's hyper-realistic volumetric effects add to the visual wow factor: Black smoke belches from burned-out tanks, sand blows across desert wastelands, and every explosion ejects chunks of dirt and plumes of dust skyward.</p>
<p>EA’s digital-distribution and DRM system, Origin, plays the part of the snake, slithering into your Battlefield 3 experience whether you want it or not. While we suffered no technical or stability problems with Origin, the client is wholly unremarkable. It gets the job done, but it pales in comparison to Valve’s well-established and feature-rich Steam. EA’s Battlelog, the web-based launcher that serves as BF3’s main menu, is equally unimpressive: Managing and communicating with friends is cumbersome, voice chat is absent, and trying to set up a game with a large group is nigh impossible.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/bf3review02-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/bf3review02-small.jpg" width="620" height="349" /></a><br /><strong>The Frostbite 2 engine delivers unparalleled lighting effects and stunning, near-photorealistic environments.</strong></p>
<p>Thankfully, Battlefield 3 roars where it matters most: Multiplayer is nothing short of sublime. Classes are extremely well balanced, weapons are varied, and the leveling and unlock trees entice you to keep playing without overwhelming new players. The game features five competitive modes: squad deathmatch, team deathmatch, rush, squad rush, and conquest. In typical Battlefield fashion, vehicles play a big role, especially in the larger maps. The spectacle of 32 or 64 players firing devastating tank rounds, crashing helicopters, and shooting down jets leads to jaw-dropping “wow” moments of emergent, chaotic goodness.</p>
<p>So, is the Chimera that is Battlefield 3 held back by its worthless goat element and its sneaky snake component? Yes, but not all that much. Battlefield 3’s unparalleled immersion factor and fantastic online modes render it the go-to multiplayer FPS well into the foreseeable future.</p>
<p><strong>$60, <a href="http://www.battlefield.com/battlefield3" target="_blank">www.battlefield.com/battlefield3</a><br />ESRB: M</strong></p>
http://www.maximumpc.com/battlefield_3_review#comments2012Battlefield 3EAGamingjanuary 2012originGamesReviewsFrom the MagazineWed, 18 Jan 2012 00:56:33 +0000Dan Scharff22165 at http://www.maximumpc.comLenovo IdeaPad U300s Reviewhttp://www.maximumpc.com/lenovo_ideapad_u300s_review
<!--paging_filter--><h3>Hits all the right notes except price</h3>
<p>Lenovo also brings its A-game to the Ultrabook party. And well it should, since it’s asking almost $1,500 for the IdeaPad U300s. That’s premium, business-ultraportable price territory. It’s therefore apropos that the U300s has the most businessy aesthetic, although not at the sake of sleek design. Like the Asus UX31E and the MacBook Air, the U300s is crafted from a single-sheet of aluminum. It eschews the wedge form factor established by Apple and instead uniquely mimics the lines of a hardbound book, with the top and bottom edges protruding slightly all the way around the perimeter, the way a book’s covers protrude past the pages. It makes for a distinct and pleasing silhouette.</p>
<p>Both bottom and top are dark gray—Graphite Gray, to use Lenovo’s parlance (Clementine Orange is also an option)—while the deck and screen bezel are matte silver. The inside is clean and minimalist, consisting of a power button, island keyboard, and large clickpad. The Shift, Enter, Caps, Tab, and Backspace keys are all slightly shortened, but typing on the U300s was a mostly comfortable, trouble-free affair, and the glass-surfaced clickpad is sublime.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/lenovoideapadu300s-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/lenovoideapadu300s-small.jpg" width="500" height="387" /></a><br /><strong>We love that the U300s's deck is free of third-party branding, but that tack helps pay the rent.</strong></p>
<p>Ports include one USB 3.0, one USB 2.0, full-size HDMI, and a headphone/mic combo. Lenovo is alone in this pack for excluding a media reader. A small button on the notebook’s left side launches Lenovo’s OneKey Recovery, which walks you through creating a system image that can be launched from the same button should your system fail. The U300s also supports Intel’s Wireless Display technology. So with a WiDi adapter (purchased separately) attached to your TV, you can stream any content from your notebook via Intel’s software.</p>
<p>Enough with the extras, how 'bout the hard stuff? The U300s is powered by a Core i7-2677M, which is clocked just a hair above the Core i5 in the Asus UX31E, at 1.8GHz. The two units traded wins in the benchmarks, although the U300s performed significantly better than the UX31E in Photoshop, for inexplicable reasons. In Quake III, the U300s suffered the fate of all single-channel RAM configs. For storage, Lenovo taps a comparatively spacious 256GB SSD. It’s a SATA 3Gb/s device using a year-old J Micron controller, but it comes close to maximum bandwidth, and subjectively speaking, the U300s feels plenty snappy. It was the quickest to boot to Windows, posting 17 seconds flat.</p>
<p>The U300s’s screen quality is on par with the UX31E’s, albeit at a lower res of 1366x768. Battery life for the two was also similar, exceeding five hours. Lenovo, however, had the speediest recharge, hitting 50 percent in 30 minutes.</p>
<p>So, yes, the U300s offers a good deal of quality for the price. But it’s nonetheless costly, and by contrast, the Asus UX31E is the better Ultrabook value.</p>
<p><strong>$1,495, <a href="http://www.lenovo.com/" target="_blank">www.lenovo.com</a></strong></p>
http://www.maximumpc.com/lenovo_ideapad_u300s_review#comments2012acer aspire s3asus zenbook ux31eHardwarejanuary 2012lenovo ideapad u300stoshiba portege z835ultrabookConsumer NotebooksReviewsNotebooksFrom the MagazineFri, 13 Jan 2012 21:11:39 +0000Katherine Stevenson22247 at http://www.maximumpc.comAsus Zenbook UX31E Reviewhttp://www.maximumpc.com/asus_zenbook_ux31e_review
<!--paging_filter--><h3>Now we're talking turkey</h3>
<p>With the Asus UX31E, all the fuss about Ultrabooks starts to make sense. Its all-metal chassis, cut from a single sheet of aluminum, is undeniably handsome. And while this attractive metal wedge that’s just .71 inches at its thickest brings to mind the fine craftsmanship of a MacBook Air, it’s by no means a knockoff. The UX31E possesses a unique character that’s admirable in its own right. And at $1,050, it’s $250 less than its similarly spec’d Apple counterpart.</p>
<p>Silver inside and out, save for a black bezel around the screen and black backing to the keyboard, the UX31E sports a faintly etched pattern of concentric circles on its lid, while the deck is adorned with a pattern of brushed vertical lines, interrupted only by a spacious clickpad. While clickpads can be persnickety and frustrating to use, we didn’t have any issues with the pad on the UX31E. As for the keyboard, the size and spacing of the keys feels right, and although the key press is shallow, there’s a satisfying click at the end of each depression.</p>
<p>Another welcome feature of the UX31E is its 1600x900 screen resolution, besting the 1366x768 of the other screens in this roundup and the 1440x900 of the 13.3-inch MacBook Air. Like all the others, the UX31E’s screen is glossy; it produces a bright, vivid picture and holds up well off axis.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/asuszenbookux31e-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/asuszenbookux31e-small.jpg" width="500" height="387" /></a><br /><strong>The two speakers embedded in the chassis are powered by Bang &amp; Olufsen ICEpower tech and put out surprisingly full audio for a device of these dimensions.</strong></p>
<p>Internally, the UX31E also impresses. Its Core i5-2557M proc is clocked at 1.7GHz, with a max Turbo frequency of 2.7GHz. Combine that with a SATA 6Gb/s SSD and you’ve got a machine that posts healthy gains over our zero-point in the benchmarks and some of the fastest scores in this roundup. To put it in perspective, the UX31E had sequential read and write speeds of 463MB/s and 341MB/s, respectively—pretty darn close to the spec’s max bandwidth. Sadly, the SSD is just 128GB.</p>
<p>The UX31E’s battery life surpassed five hours in our tests. It recharged to 50 percent in less than an hour, and reached a full charge in three. Booting to Windows took 23 seconds.</p>
<p>Asus throws in a tasteful, brown padded carrying case for the UX31E, as well as a matching pouch that holds two connector dongles: USB-to-Ethernet and Mini VGA-to-VGA. Yes, Mini VGA is built into the unit (who knew it even existed?), along with Mini HDMI, USB 2.0, USB 3.0, headphone, mic, and a media reader.</p>
<p>All told, the UX31E weighs in at three pounds, 2.1 ounces (or 8.3 ounces, if you add the power supply). If going toe-to-toe with Apple’s Air on both design and specs, while beating its price, is what it takes to achieve product hotness, then Asus has done it.</p>
<p><strong>$1,050, <a href="http://www.asus.com/" target="_blank">www.asus.com</a></strong></p>
http://www.maximumpc.com/asus_zenbook_ux31e_review#comments2012acer aspire s3asus zenbook ux31eHardwarejanuary 2012lenovo ideapad u300stoshiba portege z835ultrabookConsumer NotebooksReviewsNotebooksFrom the MagazineFri, 13 Jan 2012 21:04:20 +0000Katherine Stevenson22246 at http://www.maximumpc.comToshiba Portégé Z835 Reviewhttp://www.maximumpc.com/toshiba_port%C3%A9g%C3%A9_z835_review
<!--paging_filter--><h3>Lightest load, lowest price, least compelling</h3>
<p>Toshiba does Acer $100 better, offering the Z835, a Best Buy exclusive, for $800. Its low price is matched by its light weight. At two pounds, 6.6 ounces, it beats all the others here by a good half-pound. But the Z835 also looks and feels the cheapest of the bunch. Its construction seems less solid—particularly the lid, which has a disconcerting amount of flex.</p>
<p>The Z835’s dark-gray and black color scheme is peppered with chrome accents that look a bit dated. All the keys on the Z835’s island keyboard are normal width, but they are also slightly squat, which takes getting used to, as does the shallow travel of all keyboards of this ilk. The keyboard’s backlighting is a surprising feature at this price—and not one currently found on the more expensive Ultrabook models. A traditional touchpad of decent size with discrete right and left buttons stands out among the other Ultrabooks’ clickpads.</p>
<p>The Z835’s hardware specs are another reflection of its low price. The centerpiece is a 1.4GHz Core i3-2367M, which doesn’t benefit from any Turbo boost whatsoever. This renders the Z835 the slowest in the benchmarks of all four Ultrabooks, and even slower than our elderly zero-point, except in Quake 4, thanks to Sandy Bridge graphics.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/toshibaportegez835-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/toshibaportegez835-small.jpg" width="500" height="387" /></a><br /><strong>Only the Portégé Z835 offers a backlit keyboard—a standard feature of the MacBook Air.</strong></p>
<p>The Z835 also skimps on storage capacity, offering just 128GB. It’s full-SSD, but that’s not saying much. The Toshiba NAND flash coupled with a Toshiba controller mustered just 187MB/s sequential reads in CrystalDiskMark—half the speed and then some of the other two SSDs in this roundup. More pathetic still, the Z835’s sequential write speed of 49.23 is 40 percent slower than that of the HDD in Acer’s S3.</p>
<p>On the brighter side, the Z835 offers the most generous array of ports, with full-size VGA in addition to full-size HDMI, two USB 2.0 ports plus one USB 3.0, and an Ethernet port—a rarity in this roundup.</p>
<p>The Z835’s glossy 1366x768 screen isn’t spectacular, but it reproduced pictures and videos without noticeable flaws and the viewing angle is thankfully wider than that of the Acer S3. In our battery rundown test, the Z835 played a continuously looping video for close to five hours. It took about three hours to completely recharge. It booted to Windows in 24 seconds, which isn’t bad.</p>
<p>Even more so than Acer’s S3, the Z835 deserves credit for offering such a svelte and exceedingly portable form factor for its price. But reaching that price entailed compromises—a few too many, in our opinion, to grant this product more than a mild endorsement.</p>
<p><strong>$800, <a href="http://www.toshiba.com/" target="_blank">www.toshiba.com</a></strong></p>
http://www.maximumpc.com/toshiba_port%C3%A9g%C3%A9_z835_review#comments2012acer aspire s3asus zenbook ux31eHardwarejanuary 2012lenovo ideapad u300stoshiba portege z835ultrabookConsumer NotebooksReviewsNotebooksFrom the MagazineFri, 13 Jan 2012 20:55:00 +0000Katherine Stevenson22245 at http://www.maximumpc.comAcer Aspire S3 Reviewhttp://www.maximumpc.com/acer_aspire_s3_review
<!--paging_filter--><h3>Priced right, but far from perfect</h3>
<p>When Ultrabooks were first announced it seemed doubtful that manufacturers could turn out these wannabe MacBook Airs at the sub-$1,000 price Intel was promising. Acer put those doubts to rest with the Aspire S3, which debuted at $900. Given its relative affordability, it’s not surprising that the Aspire S3 makes a few compromises in its Air aspirations.</p>
<p>Measuring .68 inches at its thickest, the ever-so-slightly wedged three-pound chassis is matte silver throughout, save for its black rubber hinge and gray keyboard. An attractive brushed-aluminum lid lends the S3 a solid feel and a classy countenance—at least when the notebook is closed. The inside and underneath are all plastic. Nevertheless, the S3 feels rigid when held by one corner, and we like that it opens almost 180 degrees.</p>
<p>Overall, the S3’s island keyboard is comfortable to type on, although the key press is a bit shallow and many of the oft-used keys around the periphery, such as Enter, Shift, Backspace, etc. are truncated. That’s particularly true of the arrow keys, which also double as volume and screen-brightness controls. Using the S3’s unified clickpad, which supports multitouch functions, didn’t give us any woes.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><a class="thickbox" href="/files/u139222/aceraspires3-big.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="/files/u139222/aceraspires3-small.jpg" width="500" height="387" /></a><br /><strong>Closed, the S3 cuts a more impressive figure, with its handsome brushed metal lid on display.</strong></p>
<p>Port selection is spare, a quality of all Ultrabooks, and here consists of a headphone/mic, a media reader, HDMI, and two USB 2.0 ports—the S3 is the only Ultrabook in this roundup not to feature USB 3.0.</p>
<p>Acer tapped the Core i5-2467M for processing duty. While the base clock is just 1.6GHz, it can Turbo up to 2.3GHz, and thus performed better in most benchmarks than the 2.13GHz Core i7-640LM Arrandale CPU in our zero-point ultraportable rig. The S3’s lagging score in Quake III is no doubt the result of its single-channel RAM, which is particularly problematic in older titles. Conversely, its score in Quake 4 demonstrates the advances of Sandy Bridge’s integrated graphics, although the gaming chops of any ultraportable out right now will be pretty limited.</p>
<p>In our video playback test, the S3’s battery lasted five hours; it recharged to full capacity in half that time. Videos themselves looked crisp and color-accurate on the S3’s 1366x768 glossy screen if the screen was tilted just so. Otherwise, color and detail were diminished to varying degrees.</p>
<p>The S3 is unique among these Ultrabooks for featuring a mechanical hard drive, but it’s paired with 20GB of NAND flash for SSD caching, using Intel’s Smart Response Technology (SRT). Thus, your most-often used programs benefit from the SSD’s faster performance. The S3’s boot time of approximately 39 seconds, however, was a good deal slower than that of the SSD competition.</p>
<p>Acer also offers a $1,300 S3 model with a Core i7 and a 240GB SSD. But truth be told, the body is better suited to the lower-cost category, where it must make due with the modest praise of being a decent budget option.</p>
<p><strong>$900, <a href="http://www.acer.com/" target="_blank">www.acer.com</a></strong></p>
http://www.maximumpc.com/acer_aspire_s3_review#comments2012acer aspire s3asus zenbook ux31eHardwarejanuary 2012lenovo ideapad u300stoshiba portege z835ultrabookConsumer NotebooksReviewsNotebooksFrom the MagazineFri, 13 Jan 2012 20:35:40 +0000Katherine Stevenson22244 at http://www.maximumpc.com